1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus using xerography, and more particularly, to a device for applying a lubricant to an image carrier (a photosensitive member or an intermediate transfer member) in an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
In an image forming apparatus using xerography, a photosensitive member uniformly charged is irradiated with light in order to form a latent image pattern, and toner is supplied to the photosensitive member by a developing unit to form a toner image. The toner image is transferred and fixed to a printing medium, and the remaining toner on the surface of the photosensitive member is recovered by a cleaning unit.
As a cleaning method, a scraping method of allowing a cleaning blade to contact the photosensitive member has been widely used for the reasons of simplicity of structure and low costs. When friction between the cleaning blade and the photosensitive member is high, it causes wear on the blade and the photosensitive member, resulting in a reduction of in the life span thereof.